THE YEAR OF YELLOW BUTTERFLIES
The Year of Yellow butterflies (The Blog)
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"Terrible to dress in the clothes
of a period that must end."--Frank Bidart 

"You must remember that certain things die out for a while/ so they can be remembered with affection later on." --John Ashbery

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Extra Ordinary

8/19/2015

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It was the year all the girls carved their teeth into parallelograms, 
something about the aerodynamics of it all,
the year unmarried boys sought solace in crescent rolls. 
It seemed the clouds had borrowed trouble, 
demagnetized worn cirrus paths and went wanton.

It was the year the city sang so as not to stutter, 
breathy spell when New York misplaced its 
exhaustive nostalgia, the very glow groaning.

It was the year step mothers were patient, 
ganking hippie mama chic, 
every blue jay quitting the forest in a send up of phantom rings, 
making the nature scene with coveted spots 
on endangered species shortlists 
beside semicolons, beneath the black rhino. 

It was the year uptight fathers shed fussy suits, 
took up soft-serve and psilocybin, 
all their "We’ll sees" becoming "Absolutes," 
clobber barons on high holiday.
 
It was the year obtuse ideas confronted actuality with a smirk, 
their presumptuous ilk bought time playing chess 
with exoskeleton as rooks, musty snail shells and crackle cicada.
 
It was the year tweens smoked moths by surgical moonlight, 
that middling distance gone full mirage;
the year certain folks attempted forgiveness, 
but most just had sizable seconds of Stove-Top and gravy.

It was the year Ornithologists wept at the soaring 
octaves of red winged black birds...
field study, we strung carnations like wall-eyed 
cult girls waiting for their songs to loosen.

It was a deafening year, "Loudness had won."
We learned to thumbs-up out of sheer American speechlessness,
inarticulate druggists, shunning pill-form
opted for misted tonics, every nosegay mid-wilt.

It was the year the last adult passed away,
the honeysuckles rife with their honeying,
the year still-lifing cats dozed in Isosoles of sunlight, 
jilted brides in kelp crowns needled records, 
gathered recyclables at dawn.

--James Harvey 

James Harvey received his MFA from The New School in 2010 and has poems up at Boog City andsomanytumbleweeds.com.  He is fond of Atlantic swells, honey-mustard and bass guitars.








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    Author

    Hi. I'm Joanna Fuhrman. This is a prose poetry/flash fiction blog in conversation with my  serial prose poem "The Year of Yellow Butterflies" (The Year Of Yellow Butterflies, Hanging Loose Press 2015). I had fun writing these poems about fads and trends from imaginary pasts. If you would like to add your own section, write me and I can post it (along with a short bio). Start with "It was the year...."  
    "In this extraordinary book, Fuhrman seamlessly oscillates between illusion and reality, childhood and maturity, the animal kingdom (a "babbling...walrus," a "creaky bird," a "bunny rabbit") and technology ("a baby's rebooted brains," "Virgil's internet").  She gives new life to the prose poem.  The Year of Yellow Butterflies is killer--not only Fuhrman's best book to date, but her most poignant.  "--Noelle Kocot

    "With the impish charm of an illusionist and the dazzling patter of a tummler in a Borscht Belt resort, Joanna Fuhrman suspends our expectations in The Year of Yellow Butterflies, sending us head over heels into zones of cosmic and technological bafflement and sudden parabolic grief....in this book full of brilliant predicaments and pleasures."—Rachel Loden
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